Witch Hunter Robin Fan Fiction ❯ Binah (Understanding) ❯ Stockholm Syndrome ( Chapter 9 )

Author's Note: I had an urge to tie up loose ends. Thus, I am updating. Enjoy!

 

“What do you think of, now, when you remember that night?” Touko's therapist asked.

As though in answer, the ghosts of shooting pains reverberated through Touko's back. “Pain,” she answered.

The therapist, an overweight woman with steel-gray hair and a thin mouth, who wore a great many beads in semi-precious stones and also a great many billowy skirts, nodded sagely. “Physical pain, or emotional pain as well?”

“Both,” Touko answered. She looked at her hands, and made small fists from them, willing her hands not to gesture too much, or get carried away by the memory of fear.

“Because you felt betrayed?” the therapist asked quietly.

Touko looked up. “By whom?” she asked, in reply. “Which one?”

The older woman's eyes narrowed. “You tell me. Isn't that why you're here?”

***

Doujima exited the elevator onto the fifth floor, mango milkshake in one hand, and her purse and cell phone in the other. She walked briskly across the office, more intent on setting her things down and checking her phone for a message from Nagira than the surrounding environment. But Michael swiveled a little in his chair to notice her walking through the arch, and she stopped, dead in her tracks. The mango milkshake sloshed a little in its foam container. Her keys jangled as she came to a full stop. The multiple charms on her cell phone bumped against her knuckles. Doujima stared.

Michael had done the unthinkable. He'd gotten a haircut.

And what was more, it made him cute. The incongruous sometimes-blond, sometimes-red shade of his hair came out now that the dead stuff was gone, and the healthy remainder teased into fun, boyish spikes at the top of his head. He looked like he'd just rolled out of bed, or emerged triumphant from a “just playing” wrestling match on a grass field somewhere in Doujima's distant memory of sunlit childhood. He watched her over the steel rims of his strange yellow spectacles, eyes guarded. He expected teasing, or perhaps a fight, or some other kind of berating. And Doujima, staring, wondered why exactly it was that she was such a bitch to him, most days. What ever could she have had against him, all this time? He looked like a playmate from a time she'd done her best to forget. Against her best advice, she smiled, and crossed to him.

The mango milkshake was placed down carefully, almost reverently, on his ultra-modern desk. Michael watched it with some alarm. His eyes flicked back to her, a furrow appearing between his brows. Tentatively, Doujima reached out, put her fingers in the new hair, and pulled, just a little. Michael's face went from apprehension to complete consternation. She brought her hand back from the hair, and picked up her drink once more.

“This is better,” she said, smiling warmly.

“Thanks,” Michael replied. Real warmth came to his eyes—something rare. He wasn't cold, no, not like Amon was cold (Doujima couldn't help but laugh inside at her own helpless, unintended pun), but Michael was always…observing. Perhaps it was thanks to his collar, worn too long, that he always seemed so unable to get really excited about things other than his own security system, or maybe snack cakes and loud music, but he'd always struck Doujima as a little distant and aloof. As though he were smarter than everyone else there—so smart that he'd needed the collar. It was why she liked to tease him about it, she realized, experiencing this tiny revelation as she continued to look at him and smile—she wanted to bring him down to her level. And it was really, she realized, because she knew she wasn't smart. Witch Hunter, Solomon operative, unrepentant fashionista, yes, but Doujima didn't think of herself as truly “smart.” Not genius material, and not a powerful Craft user, and not particularly brave—not particularly special for anything.

“I'm glad you told me to do that,” Michael admitted grudgingly, interrupting her train of thought. “It was a really good idea,” he muttered, looking down at his desk.

“Oh, don't be silly,” Doujima answered, letting her smile crinkle the edges of her eyes and wondering about laugh lines in twenty years. “You're the one who chose to do it. I was just…being mean…earlier.”

Michael shrugged. “There's usually a grain of truth in everything mean,” he said. “And hey, at least you got me to get out of here, right?”

Right,” Doujima said, continuing to smile. To avoid Michael's eyes, she looked around the office. “Where's Miss Bonn?” she asked.

“Good question,” Michael responded. “She's been AWOL since yesterday.”

“Weird…”

“Yeah, she's the one who's usually so serious about work…”

“Is she answering her mobile?”

Michael shook his head. “I've tried all morning.”

Doujima frowned. “What about Miho, and Sakaki?”

“Out, as far as I know,” Michael shrugged. “It is really weird, though.”

Doujima frowned. “Really weird…” she repeated, and took a contemplative sip of her milkshake. Where could everyone be?

***

“She set their hair on fire?” Nagira asked over the phone, half incredulous, half laughing.

“That's right.” Once again, Amon was cleaning his guns. He did in the kitchen as usual, with the phone balanced between his ear and his shoulder, both hands at work. He brought the barrel of one Glock up to meet his eye, and peered through. Clean as a whistle. He blew into it, for good measure. It was a quiet occupation, cleaning guns. And Robin, who he'd heard twisting about in her sleep all night, needed quiet this morning.

“Damn.” Nagira exhaled smoke; Amon heard it through the wires. “She's getting more precise, little brother.”

“You're telling me.”

“And without her glasses, too.” There was bait in Nagira's tone. Amon had little time for bait, and rolled his eyes.

“What are you getting at?”

“How strong are those glasses, really?”

Amon evaded. It was what he was best at, aside from destroying things and people. “What do you mean?”

“Obviously they're not prescription lenses. Robin would have had to attend an eye appointment. So, where'd you get them? A drugstore? A convenience store?”

Amon listened for Robin's presence nearby. She was still in her room, and with hearing that was beginning to grow almost unnaturally good, he was sure she still slept. He looked at the morning-bright kitchen, and his equipment on the table, the gun parts, the towels blackened with streaks of gun-dirt. He had never told her where the glasses came from. She had never asked.

“How did you go about buying them?” Nagira pressed.

“Should that matter?” Amon picked up the grip of one gun, and began polishing it, slowly. “They do the job.”

“Her vision is fine without them,” Nagira observed. “I've seen it.”

“Using her Craft causes her pupils to dilate. She needs the lenses to compensate.”

“Says you,” Nagira teased. “But how could simple reading glasses do that much?”

“Obviously they do something, if her precision is increased.”

“Except for when she wants them back, Amon, and then she's twice as precise.” Nagira hissed out smoke again. “It's just a psychosomatic thing, isn't it?” he asked. “She could really do just fine, glasses or no glasses.”

“Anything's possible,” Amon admitted. “I merely wanted to help her improve her vision.”

“Was that all it was, little brother?” Nagira wondered. He sounded as though he had more to say, but was deliberately holding back.

“What else could it be?” Amon asked, irritably. “She demonstrated improvement almost immediately upon using the glasses. Her precision increased. There was far less danger. She was able to participate in Hunts more effectively and safely. I fail to see why this is an issue.”

Amon could practically hear his brother's elaborate shrug, on the other end of the line. “Even trained falcons are hobbled, at night,” Nagira answered. “Any animal that can kill is usually put in a cage, or on some kind of a leash. It makes us all feel a little safer.”

Amon breathed in, and breathed out. He willed the phone not to freeze solid, and for his anger's cold howl to cease inside his stomach and chest. “I didn't call you for a lecture,” he said. “This is a routine update.”

“Don't let her cripple herself, Amon,” Nagira warned. “Not least because the poor kid isn't used to getting presents.”

“This conversation is over.” Amon hung up the phone. Quietly.

***

“Did you feel betrayed by her?” the therapist asked. “Your roommate? Robin?”

Touko began to shake her head. Beside her, on a little table, the tea that was meant to soothe her had long since gone cold. This was what nearly-endless Solomon funds could obtain for a patient in psychiatric treatment: a session with time enough for tea to cool. Touko reminded herself that this woman was especially suited to Solomon's needs; she had been a favorite of the organization for her discretion and willingness to suspend disbelief when it came to hearing about cases. It was how, after the death of her father, and the full-scale meltdown that happened as a result, Touko had found herself in Osaka and undergoing treatment all on Solomon's dime.

“I didn't feel particularly betrayed by her,” Touko answered. “Robin couldn't truly betray me. She never betrayed a confidence of mine, because I didn't confide in her.”

“You didn't trust her?”

“She made me nervous. She had the Fire Craft. It can be very dangerous.”

“Did Robin ever use her Craft in the house, when you lived together? Is that what made you so nervous, about her?”

Touko watched her therapist's expensive pen jot notes in black slashes across a broad yellow legal pad, which was already filled with many pages of notes, all about Touko. Touko is a crazy bitch, the therapist wrote inside Touko's mind. Touko is seriously fucked-up and needs help. Touko should not be allowed to mix with the rest of society. She is ruined. She is afraid of everything and everyone.

“She used the Craft in the house, once. I asked her to stop, after that.”

“Was Robin receptive to this suggestion? Did you two fight, about it?”

Touko shook her head. Her brown hair, still shiny despite her time in the hospital, shook softly with it in waves around her face. She held her laced fingers very tight. “No, Robin never once fought with me about anything,” she answered quietly.

The therapist watched Touko through glasses that magnified her eyes and made them seem huge and owlish. She arched one salt-and-pepper eyebrow. “But you did not trust her? Why? Was it because she was a Witch?”

“Perhaps,” Touko answered. “My father never trusted Witches. It's probably something I picked up along the way, although I don't think of myself as being very prejudiced.”

“Did you have any other acquaintances who were Witches?” Touko shook her head.

“What about Seeds?”

Touko stared into her therapist's magnified eyes, and felt like a child again. “Amon,” she said softly. “Amon was a Seed.” Her knuckles whitened, in her lap.

“He never once exhibited signs of the Craft?”

Touko shook her head violently. “Never.”

“But his parents…?”

“Solomon Hunted them. His father was first, because his power had overgrown his ability to control it. But then, when they came for his father, Amon's mother overreacted, and tried to protect him. Her power manifested itself, and she was never the same, after that. He couldn't…reach her.”

“What happened, after that?”

“Solomon killed her. They came to the house. She fought back. She was gunned down. Amon was watching.”

“He saw her die?”

Touko nodded silently, willing the hot, hard lump in her throat to dissolve away. She blinked, and the moisture at her eyes dripped down her face in warm, salty streaks. “Yes,” she whispered.

“Why is this so difficult, for you?” The constant jotting of notes appeared to have stopped.

“Because…” Touko tried to find the words. How could she explain that Amon was only one man, but also all men, for her? How could she ever tell someone else the truth: that he was father, brother, and lover, in one, but when he had told her of his mother so many years ago, he had become her son, as well? How to explain that she had loved the cold, dark man as her own little boy, before he'd grown up and become a killer? That her heart, which had carried his weight, had expanded like a womb to protect him, was slack and hollow now, without him in it? More tears followed their intrepid pioneers, down her face.

“Because, I know the story so well,” she said, finally. “It's like I was there.”

“Because you've known Amon since you were both young?”

“We were children, together,” Touko affirmed, nodding, sniffing. She reached beside the cold mug of tea for a tissue, and wiped daintily at her nose. Mucus and lipstick came off. “My…father…was interested in him.”

“How old were you, when you first met Amon?”

“Twelve.” Touko smiled ruefully through her tears. “I had a crush on him, even then. It was a stupid little girlhood crush, but even then, I knew there was something special about him. He was fifteen, then, and the last thing he wanted was a twelve-year-old hanging on his every word, but, still…” She sniffed again. “I was persistent, I guess.”

“He was often a guest in your home?”

Touko nodded. “Some weekends. My father thought the orphanage that Solomon was running wasn't good enough for someone like Amon, and he was right. It wasn't good enough. Amon deserved better than that.”
“Did he ever complain of mistreatment?”

Touko shook her head emphatically. “Amon would never, ever complain.” She balled up the tissue in one fist, and squeezed it. “But, he had no one to pay attention to him, there. No one to really look after him, and take him seriously. Dad wanted to do that, for him.”

“So, your father became like a second father, for Amon?”

Touko nodded, but she was frowning. “Almost,” she answered. “I mean, Dad was always busy, too, really busy. So even when Amon came home, he and Dad never did anything together. Amon said he liked it, just because it gave him a quiet place to do his homework…” She played with the tissue with an errant, nervous thumb. “And then when Amon went away for his Hunter training, he and Dad didn't talk, or anything.”

“And did you?”

“I sent him birthday cards, and letters,” Touko said. “I got little notes from him, once or twice. Hunters in training are very busy. But I wanted to let him know that I was supportive of him.”

“Like the mother he didn't have?”

Touko's face rose to look at her interlocutor's. She bit her lower lip until it hurt, and nodded, slowly. Her rueful smile reappeared. “Yeah. I guess so, when you say it like that.”

The therapist cleared her throat, took a sip of water, and flipped to a fresh page in the notebook. “And was there any sexual activity, in your teen years?”

“He was my first time.”

“And you were his?”

Touko nodded silently. “To my knowledge,” she whispered.

“Was it a romantic relationship?”

Touko squirmed. There was no easy way to explain this. “Sometimes, I think it was just to get back at my dad,” she said. “Even though Amon was always welcome with us, we all knew he was still a Seed. And Dad hated Witches. So, what better way to get my revenge on him, for never being there, than to…?” She trailed off, and shrugged. “But, that wasn't the only reason. I really…loved…him, in spite of everything.”

“Your father?”

“Amon.”

“And did he seem to have feelings for you in return?”

Fresh tears rose in Touko's eyes. She hated how hard this was, even years and years later. The old pain was like a fermenting substance inside her; given a little bit of something to feed on, it would bubble up to her surface and spew out, under such intense pressure that she couldn't stem its flow. “I think he did,” she choked out, almost crying, now. “Back then, I really…I really think he did…” She brought the tissue up and roughly pushed it beneath her eyes. “I mean, he never said anything, but…I told him it was okay, if he never told me so. Because I knew. And I did know, I really did! Just the way he would hold me, like he never wanted to let me go…like I was the only thing he could hold onto…”

“But he was unable to be emotionally intimate, with you?”

Touko nodded, staring at the floor, her mind swimming with the images of the younger Amon. “He was so wounded, so broken…something was always missing, inside him.”

For once, her therapist's voice gentled. “And you thought you could heal him?”

She nodded. “I thought if I could just show him that I wasn't going to go away, and I wasn't going to leave him, that I would always be there, I wouldn't abandon him like everyone else…”

“Like his mother?”

“Yes, I would never leave him, like she had…”

“Even though Amon's mother was a Witch, and he had entered the business of killing Witches?”

Touko stared at the other woman in the room. “It wasn't like that,” she said. “He loved his mother. With all his heart. That's why it ruined him, when she turned…she became another person, with the Craft. She chose the Craft, over her own son! Of course he was confused!”

“Did Amon hate Witches, the way your father did?”

“He…” Touko tried to slow down the images of Amon she kept locked away until the moments in this safe room when she could review them again. They sped past her mind's eye at a painful rate, flashing her with images of the man she both loved and resented in equal measure. Because it was resentment. Because she could never do anything other than hate him, if only because she loved him so very much, and always had done so, and without him, her identity was gone.

“He didn't hate Robin,” Touko answered. Her saliva tasted of metal, and her skull felt like lead. She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream. She wanted to beat Amon within an inch of his life, and drag him back to bed to lick his wounds all by herself, take care of him. She was sick, sick, sick. Not worthy of that kind of happiness, any longer. So, she was doing her best to destroy the possibility of it ever happening again. “He didn't hate Robin.”

***

Robin stood in the kitchen, where Amon was polishing a knife. It wasn't a kitchen knife, but a Hunting weapon, in multiple senses of the term. It could skin a man and a rabbit with equal precision. He scraped the steel across a whetstone with methodical ease, having done it hundreds of times before, and knowing he would do it hundreds of times again. They would go see the coven again, soon, and he wanted to be ready.

Robin appeared to be starting something vaguely resembling dinner. He watched her back as she stood before the items she'd accumulated on the counter. She was chopping vegetables, having already chopped up some meat into equal sections. The meat she had placed in a skillet with some oil, but had not begun to cook, yet. She was looking at something in a recipe, which apparently was cadged from their paper. Robin apparently remembered something, and dug through the cupboards for spices. Amon maintained his rhythmic sharpening of the knife, knowing that an interruption in the rhythm would also disturb her own cycles, and far be it from him to get in the way of dinner—especially when she was much better than he, at it. And really, although it would be much easier if he got up and helped her reach for the thing that she sought from her position on the tips of her toes, he was comfortable where he sat, watching.

Finding what she was looking for, Robin uncapped the ingredients, and began tapping them out into another bowl. Her left hand stretched out almost lazily, and much in the same way as a conductor would begin a symphony, she started cooking. Fire hissed into life beneath the skillet. And she hadn't touched a single knob on the stove. His sharpening ceased.

“There's no need to show off,” he said stonily.

Robin shrugged, not looking at him. “I want to see how long I can keep it going,” she said. “All I know how to do is Hunt with it. I want to know how to do useful things, too.”

“Hunting isn't useful?”

“Not when we die of E Coli, it isn't.”

He wondered just how long she'd been saving that. Robin, to put it plainly, was only funny when she wasn't intending to be. She only tested his smile when she didn't mean to. But occasionally, ever-so-rarely, she knew how to stop him in his tracks. Amon sighed, and rose. He crossed the kitchen and came to stand behind her, looking at the meat in the skillet over her shoulder.

“That's chicken,” he said. “We'd die of salmonella.”

Oil hissed and spat, bubbles bursting. He stared down at Robin, who had turned her face upward to look at him with a mixture of hot teenage annoyance, amusement, and something he couldn't quite define—a small battle between her convent girl upbringing and the urge to slap him, perhaps. There was a faint shadow around her eyes, hinting at her lack of sleep. Fine lines gathered there; it made her seem older than her true age. He stared down into grass green eyes and dared her, just dared her to tell him to go fuck himself. It would be better than anything she could ever make for him. He breathed evenly, waiting for a response. She swallowed.

“Your hands are dirty,” she said. “Go wash them.”

Wordless, Amon obeyed, stepping left two steps to the sink, and letting the taps run warm water over his hands. With his hair hanging between them, he could allow himself to smile just a little, because no matter who wore those stupid glasses or why, he knew who the more powerful was, between them. And as much as he liked her meek, watching her give orders was better.

***

Miho stirred the remainder of her soup idly, with her chopsticks. A few onions floated on the broth's surface. Restaurant noise permeated the air. She looked at Sakaki, who stared at the dregs of his own soup; the bits of fatty tendon lying at the bottom of his bowl.

“If she was angry at Michael, why was she thinking about…them?” Sakaki asked, for perhaps the fifth time.

She had bought him dinner. She knew that luring would be necessary; they didn't spend time together outside the office often. She would have to give him something, to make him listen. But he was the only one left to trust—if only because Miho knew without the use of her Craft that Michael would want it too badly to be true, that Amon and Robin were alive. And Doujima was out of the question, naturally, as was Margarethe Bonn.

“If things are going well with her boyfriend, why is she under so much stress?” Miho continued.

“What isn't she telling us?” Sakaki murmured. “Why is she still keeping secrets, after all…?” He didn't finish the question. He didn't need to. Miho knew what he meant to say. She had thought the experience at Factory counted for something with Doujima, too.

“She would only keep a secret if the stakes were high,” Miho said. “That means that we know very well what that secret could be, if there was one.”

“Miss Bonn could be right,” Sakaki whispered, almost more to himself than to Miho. “And if she is, she is already on their trail.”

“It would explain why Doujima told us nothing,” Miho acknowledged. “The fewer that knew, the better, right?”

“It's exactly something that she would think.” Sakaki shook his head. “No, that's wrong; it's exactly something that Amon would think.”

“If Robin were alive…” Even now, Miho had difficulty saying the words, acknowledging their possibility as reality. “He wouldn't want to…I mean, he wouldn't trust anyone but himself…”

“And Robin would be afraid of endangering us,” Sakaki finished grimly. “But then, why Doujima?” He opened his palms, questioning the air.

A clichéd pop love ballad assailed their ears over the restaurant's piped-in system. “Nagira,” Miho said. “Amon's brother. She loves him.”

“Isn't that what it always comes down to?” Sakaki muttered, a note of bitterness in his voice that Miho had never quite heard so bald before. “That stupid girl.”

The love song continued. Miho smiled, ever so slightly. “But wouldn't it be wonderful?” she asked wistfully, “if it were true?”

Kobari-tenchou, the “master” of Harry's restaurant, stepped up to their table, a tray of coffee in his hands. He set the tray down with a slight rattle as the porcelain cups settled in place once more. He watched them with benevolent eyes. “Yes, Miss Karasuma,” he said. “It would be wonderful, if it were true.”

***

After therapy, Touko usually stood under a showerhead for an hour or so, waiting until the water turned her skin a cooked shade of red, and until she was scrubbed clean. Then she took a few sedatives, and went to sleep with the television on. Human voices, even falsely cheerful ones, were necessary to cut the oppressive silence of her Solomon-funded apartment. She was the heiress to Zaizen's money, of course, but Solomon wanted her quiet. So, they paid for everything, even the sedatives. Especially the sedatives.

But there was no early sleep for Touko, tonight. She emerged from her appointment with fresh makeup, having stopped in a restroom on her way out. There was a woman with spiky red hair sitting the waiting area, waiting, she knew, for her. “Touko?” she asked uncertainly, her single Japanese word strangely accented.

“Yes, that's me,” Touko answered.

“Margarethe Bonn, STN-J,” the Witch Hunter said. “Thank you for contacting me.”

“I heard you were interested in Amon Nagira,” Touko answered. “Let's go somewhere more private…”

She followed the Hunter to a waiting vehicle. And she went over again in her mind what she would tell this foreign Hunter, who had never met Amon or Robin. She would say that Amon was not dead, could not be dead, because if he were, every part of her would feel it—feel the wrenching rip as her spirit's ties to him went forever slack. He was one man, and yet all men, as she'd thought in her session that day: father, brother, lover, and son. He could not be dead. If he were, she would be dead, also. Or she would be utterly insane. So, she hoped. Touko hoped very hard that she was right, and that her intuition, her only tool for survival with her taciturn, loveless father and his razor's-edge-of-safety business, was speaking true. She hoped Amon was alive, if only because she needed so desperately to free herself from him of her own volition.